Elex Hands-On At Pax East

Steve Tyminski lives in the great state of New Jersey and is a huge sports fan, especially the Devils/Mets/Jets. He went to college for Criminal Justice and History and has journalism experience. Been a Nintendo Guy for a long as he can remember and grew up with the Mario Brothers. His sense of humor comes out in his writing. Twitter-Follow at https://twitter.com/TumsST

 Published March 10, 2017 9:30 PM

Sci-fi RPG thriller!

The world of Elex is considered part science fiction and part fantasy. That description fits the game to a “T” during the gameplay when you are attacking dinosaurs and using a jetpack to get away from those same dinosaurs. It was the main goal of the developers of Elex to make you forget you were playing a video game and the demo does a pretty good job of that.

Like I just mentioned Elex is sci-fi/fantasy. You can also throw RPG into that mix as well where you can level up your character as well as level up attributes such as strength for the character. You will need to beef up your fighter because everything is out to kill you but at the same time you can kill everything too. That in turn will change the story and that adds an interesting twist to the game.

“Elex” creates magic in the game but will change the person. If you have a strong mind you’ll be able to fight it but you don’t it will mutate you and that’s what happened to some of the larger enemies you’ll come across in Elex. To help you deal with these monsters you’ll have all kinds of weapons to use such as chainsaw swords, flaming swords, and grenade launchers.

While playing the demo, I felt that the writing needed work but I understand that this is an early build. This issue rose its ugly head during NPC interaction but that’s usually when poor writing comes out of games like this.

The controls are tough at times but like in most RPGs there is a learning curve at the beginning. The basic controls reminded me of Link from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time where the main character would roll, target an enemy, sword-fighting just to name a few.

To build off of the jetpack mentioned before, you can get hurt from falling from high distances and can die. The distance doesn’t need to be that high either. There is a stamina meter in Elex and I can’t stand these things. I have never liked the idea of a stamina meter in any game.

During gameplay, you gain experience points to level up. You also learn new skills through skill trees or perks. There are teachers that can teach new skills but they aren’t free so you’ll have to do something for the teacher to get them to teach you.

There is no multiplayer planned for Elex since the developers feel it would take away from the story and the game is extremely story driven.